Extreme Bass, Rush Lake

Rush Lake is normally money in the bank for me. I have won three tournaments on Rush and have finished in the money several more - not this time! It was the toughest fishing I have ever had on Rush. I have a couple of spots that normally produce big fish for me all summer, which I had checked on my two pre-fishing trips - nothing! My hope was they just were not there yet but would be at tournament time a week later.
Tournament day the wind was blowing 20-30 mph which created a couple of problems, my spots were basically unfishable and the lake fished very small since a good portion of the field tried to fish out of the wind.
Our first spot already had two boats on it when we arrived so we didn't spend much time there - no fish, we then ran to some docks on the East lake that we saw good fish cruising the shallows - nothing. We decided to make an attempt to fish my best spot even though the wind was pounding it, after about fifteen minutes we gave up - it was impossible - still no fish. We then spent some time running to docks & reeds that were somewhat out of the wind, the problem was every where we went someone was already there. We fished these areas the best we could without stepping on any ones toes and fortunately landed our first keeper - a 15 incher which clued us in a little. The fish blew up on a frog on the inside edge of a small patch of pads but missed it, I threw in a Comida and the fish hit immediately, I threw right back in and caught another 12 incher.
Now we had a pattern to work with! By now it was about 12:30 and only 2 fish. I had one more area on West Rush we hadn't been to yet that was similar to our pattern, and it was out of the wind! We were surprised when we got there to find no one there, what a relief. We immediately started casting frogs and I hooked up with a 3lber right away. This fish clued us in even more, it came from an isolated clump of weeds near shore. The fishing almost seemed easy after that, we continued to catch fish from every isolated clump of weeds or pads in that area and were culling by 1:30.
We ended up with about 12 1/2 pounds for the day and somewhere in the middle of the pack. This was a bad day for me on Rush Lake, but I did learn I need to be more versatile and take what the lake is giving me.